Marc Lineback

11/30/2017
UWRT 1104
Campbell

Final Reflective Letter

Dear Professor Campbell,

First of all, I would like to thank you for being an amazing writing professor, and making

this course enjoyable. In the beginning of the semester, I was ready to write this course off as a

means to a general-education end, but to my surprise, it was much more than that. For example,

the daily daybook free-writes.

These little, five-minute trains of recorded thought were the kind of satisfying

participation Id expect in any English class, yet have never seen before. The free-writes also

helped me very much on other writing assignments, My topic matters because being the

most helpful. That free-write is the main reason my EIP turned out so well, in my opinion. In the

beginning of trying to pick my topic, I was playing around with a couple ideas that pertained to

stuff I really enjoyed, because I believed you when you said that the assignment would be so

much harder if I did it on something that I wasnt interested in. I wasnt so sure about eSports

though, I knew I liked games, but I never got into eSports, which is partly why I picked it. I

considered changing my topicuntil that free-write. That free-write really solidified my topic

for me, and showed me that I had the drive and passion to write a well written paper on the

subject. I also showed myself that I was still curious, and still had questions I could research,

which was a relief because I thought I was running out of material. Overall though, the free-
writes were a fun way to start the day, and a useful tool to measure how my thinking has changed

from the beginning of the semester to now. I used to think that writing was a chore, but now I see

it as a form of expression. Neither entry is on my portfolio, but when I wrote Writing is... for

the first time, I was very analytical. I thought of literal dictionary definitions, historical uses,

recent uses, and my bad high-school experiences with it. At the end of the semester, however, I

was much more open with my responses. To quote myself, Writing is a misunderstood and

underrated form of expression. While the daybook entries were useful for recording how my

thought process changed, the blog posts played a larger role in really changing my thought

process.

The blog posts were the most fun Ive ever had with homework before. Admittedly, I did

a large number of them late, however they were still very enjoyable and eye-opening. Each

assignment challenged a way of thinking in some way, and through that, I believe it has made me

slightly more analytical as a person. I never would have thought that spending money on others

could buy you happiness, or that there is a shadow author out there who writes college essays

for a living. Reflecting on each assignment also made me realize how bad I was at reflections,

and that I could improve on understanding myself more. Even while typing this, I am slightly

struggling in putting my thoughts into words. I know how I feel, and how I felt, but explaining

how I got from there to here is something I didnt know was one of my weaknesses. By the end

of the blog assignments, I feel that I am a better reflector than I was in August. The studio

assignments also helped me become better at reflecting on my own work.

The studios seemed really intimidating at the start of the semester, especially since they

are why the course is four credit hours. Overall, however, they werent very challenging. The

studios supplemented the class very well, helping research the EIP and learn more about how to
improve my writing through strategies and not just practice. There were six studios total, but

studio four was kind of a wash because I did the annotated bibliography first. The last studio also

snuck by me, and the deadline passed without me realizing it. The studios helped me the most

with the topic proposal, which I had a lot of issues with.

The topic proposal was the most difficult assignment, in my experience. It was the most

difficult assignment in terms of stress because I couldnt stop thinking about how if I chose the

wrong topic, I couldnt change it later. In reality I knew I could change it if I really wanted to,

but that would have been way more work than what was necessary, and Im all about efficiency.

Speaking of efficiency, I got to a point with my topic proposal where I went completely off the

rubric and somehow started to include parenthetical citations. I wasnt going to let all of that

hard work go to waste, so I cut out the parts that didnt belong (citations and all), and put them in

an EIP pieces document, that I then used for my EIP. By the end of the assignment, I was still

feeling if-y about my topic, but I really liked the topic proposal I wrote, so I committed. In my

topic proposal, I mentioned that I would play the games to get an insiders experience, then use

what I learned in my EIP. This was a sneaky way for me to play video games and call it

homework, but in the end, I never ended up playing more than one game. Luckily it worked out

in the end, and it wasnt a drag through a topic I didnt like. I was surprised to find so many

sources for my topic, which came in handy for my annotated bibliography.

The annotated bibliography was the easiest assignment, I thought. I imagine that was

only because I already had a peer reviewed journal, which is a harder source to come by. I started

and finished it on the same day, which isnt true for any other writing assignment. The hardest

part was getting the formatting for the sources right, other than that, I didnt have any trouble.
Looking back, assignments like this are the main reason I procrastinate, they are easy so I can

put it off. Speaking about procrastination, I procrastinated the most on the first EIP draft.

The first EIP draft wasnt as hard as I made it out to be, as a matter of fact, splitting the

assignment into pages made it easier. Either that, or working with a topic I enjoyed made it

easier, or both. While I did procrastinate, I also put a lot of effort into my draft, I wanted to try

and make it perfect the first time. This involved a lot of typing, deleting, retyping, redeleting, etc.

Also, the order in which I used my sources was something I played around a lot with. I wanted

my most unbelievable facts out front in the beginning to catch the attention of the reader, while

sliding in important facts here and there. I also made good use of every writers move in my

vocabulary to keep the paper flow nicely. My first intention was for my paper to be an

informational, research paper, but in the end, it turned into something more persuasive, and Im

okay with that. I challenged myself to keep my opinions out of the paper, but I couldnt help but

find more and more sourced that agreed with me. The recourse I made the most use out of was

the peer reviewed journal, which gave me so much to work with and go into detail about, I was

afraid it took up too much of the paper. I also ended in the wrong spot, which was more my

procrastination than my writing. I turned in the assignment late on accident, but was (pleasantly)

surprised when I still received a 92. After writing five pages, I was already more than halfway

done with my EIP, and was excited to continue because I knew exactly what I wanted to add and

where.

My draft came back with a few clarification issues, some source mistakes, and some

common errors that could have been easily avoided. Starting on my final EIP draft was easy,

because I already knew where I wanted to start after I fix the mistakes you pointed out. The

biggest revision I made, was elaborating more on the characteristics of a sport. I felt bad about
just explaining away in one paragraph what couldve been elaborated on through a few

paragraphs, so that is where I started. After I had typed out and expanded where I wanted to, it

was back to moving around my sources and information, so it made sense, yet was also

interesting to read. There was one bit about why people may not see video games as sports

because of the link to obesity in America, and since my paper had turned into a persuasive paper,

I wanted to have that anywhere but the end. I also redid the ending to the MBVGs paragraph,

because it didnt fit well with the rest of the paper. There was one piece of advice that I couldnt

follow through with, and that was cutting my word count in half. I honestly tried, but I just

couldnt find where to cut out words. It was all important information, and it was also all crucial

to the length of the paper. I realize that the activity was meant to turn all of the On the other

hand s into However s, but I felt that repeating the same writers move multiple times took

away from the flow of the paper. In a real high-school fashion, I ended with a conclusion and

summed up my main talking points, which hopefully left the reader a feeling of closure. With my

biggest paper out of the way, it was time to organize everything onto one website, and man, the

website was a beast.

In the beginning of the class, I created a skeleton of my site, and thankfully, past me was

smart enough to use some of his extra time to make a skeleton a bit detailed, leaving less work

for me now. I typed my daybook entries, because I liked how neat it looked, and didnt like

seeing sloppy handwriting, or a low-quality image on my page. I wanted my homepage to be as

clean and neat as possible, I think a busy homepage turns the reader off. My final reflective letter

is going to go right next to the homepage, and after that, the tabs will go in the order they are

discussed in the reflective letter! Sadly, however, I will not be including my Dear Malcolm

letter, because I lost it in the transition from UNCC library computers, to the laptop I got in the
middle of the semester. Creating my site using Weebly wasnt too difficult, Ive had past

experience(8329332.weebly.com), it was formatting the pages that I had slight trouble with. I

wanted to make it all look organized and clean, which was a headache, but I believe turned out

well. The last thing I wanted was my site to look thrown together last minute. Overall, building

the ePortfolio wasnt very difficult, I enjoyed the process. I even finished early enough to get the

extra credit points, which was nice. My favorite page in the whole site is the informal writings

page, I had the most fun with these assignments, and loved seeing my growth through them.

As a final thought, I would like to thank you again, professor Campbell. It was a pleasure

being taught by someone who has a passion for what they do, and years of experience doing it.

Also, being in a casual setting where I could tell you respected us just as much as we (I, at the

very least) respected you, was the best experience Ive had so far in college. I dont get out

much, I know, but my expectations for your class were well past exceeded. I will be referring all

my friends to your class in the future, and hope you keep having a fun time teaching, because

honestly, thats what really made the class for me.